Hospital Services
PNTB’s hospital services team provides materials, inservices and individual education to help hospitals maximize organs and tissue for transplantation. The team also provides designated requestor training to certify hospital staff to approach families about donation.
Forms and Documents
Consent
- In English
- In Spanish
- In Russian
- Next-of-kin priority list
Referral
Legislation
The U.S. federal and state legislative bodies have historically supported donation and transplantation. Toward this end, they have enacted laws and put into place mechanisms to create a strong, permanent foundation for saving and enhancing lives through donation and transplantation.
- Uniform Anatomical Gift Act of 1968
- Establishes legality of donating a deceased individual’s organs for transplantation or other uses (research and/or therapy).
- Protects health care personnel from potential liability arising from organ procurement.
- Uniform Determination of Death Act 1980
- Recognizes the legality of brain death.
- Determines that the irreversible cessation of all brain function constitutes death in the same way as cessation of heartbeat and respiration.
- National Organ Transplant Act
of 1984
- Prohibits the buying and/or selling of organs.
- Requires establishment of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN).
- Paves the way for the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) to be awarded the OPTN contract and to manage the organ distribution.
- Prevents physician who declares brain death from being same physician involved in transplantation.
- "Required
Request/Required Referral" state laws of the mid-1980s
- Requires healthcare professionals to assess/identify every potential donor.
- Provides for every potential donor or donor family to be given the opportunity to donate.
- Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986 (Required
Request federal law)
- Federally mandates Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) to coordinate the procurement and transplantation process at local levels.
- Requires hospital to be affiliated with a federally mandated OPO.
- Requires hospitals participating in Medicare and Medicaid to establish written protocols for donation in order to maintain certification.
- The
Health Care Financing Administration’s (HCFA) revised Medicare
Conditions of Participation (COP) of 1998
- Federally mandates hospitals to refer all deaths to the local organ recovery organization (OPO).
- Mandates hospitals to determine who makes the request to potential donor families and requires requesters to be OPO employees or OPO trained.
- Requires hospitals to have an arrangement with an eye and a tissue bank.
- Requires hospitals to work with OPOs in conducting medical record reviews to ensure that the families of all potential donors have been approached.